


treading water

by thehanbaniverse



Category: Brutalmoose - Fandom, Caddicarus - Fandom, Hidden Block (Video Blogging RPF), NormalBoots
Genre: Gen, Ocean, Stranded, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehanbaniverse/pseuds/thehanbaniverse
Summary: one misty morning, jim caddick and ian macleod find themselves on a tiny raft in the ocean. "why are they there" is the question.





	1. where the heck are we

" _Come on, Moosey. Wake up._

_Ian, I'm not freakin' playing, we're lost. Wake up."_

I slowly open my eyes, and I don't see a ceiling, but I see a cloudy sky, and I hear waves crashing against each other. Am I...swimming? No, I'm not wet... "Jim...we're dreami-" "No, we're not, Ian." Jim pinches my arm and points in the distance. "We're stuck in the ocean on a raft. I don't know how the heck we got here, but we need to get back." "You don't know how we got here? Not one bit of memory how we ended up in the ocean?" "Nope, just woke up here a few minutes ago."

If you want to know why we're both here, all of HiddenBlock and NormalBoots were on a cruise. That's all I remember. And after we slept through the night, we ended up here together, on this raft. No context, no real evidence as to why, we're just...here. Did our memories get wiped out somehow?

"How are we going to move this thing? Are we just gonna let the wind take i-" Jim jumps in the water, grabs the raft, and starts pushing it while kicking his legs. "I'll be your motor for now," he announces in his thick English accent. So we head on, without talking or looking at each other.

..Oh yeah, I'm Ian MacLeod. And that British guy with the beanie that he never takes off who is pushing the raft is Jim Caddick. We're 25 and 22, we both have thick beards (not as thick as Jirard Khalil's, though), and we review games on YouTube. This is something way out of the ordinary for us, obviously. First, we're hanging out with our friends, and the next thing we know, we're on a raft in the sea, in the middle of nowhere. We can swim, but it's just going to tire us. What if we lose the raft in an accident and we have to swim our way back? We can't make it.

I wonder how this is all going to turn out. There's a 50/50 chance we're going to die, but what do I know...?

 


	2. looking for a paddle

**_ian's pov;_ **

Jim gets up onto the raft, panting and plopping down on his back. " _Ian...I don't think I can be the motor anymore..._ " "I'm too tired to do it right now. I think we're just gonna have to see where the wind takes us," I say. "Tired? Literally ALL you've done was just sit there. How are you tired? _Sigh_....if only this thing came with paddles..." "...Should we just...use our arms?" "That won't do jack squat," Jim says back.

I look out for anything we could use, specifically driftwood. "...Jim, do you think you can help me look for some driftwood?" "How, exactly? We can't 'find' any by just standing in this raft looking at the water. We have to do this _manually_." "What do you mean 'manually'- JIM!" Jim grabs my hand and we topple over into the water. "....JIM, YOU IDIOT!" I holler as I surface. Jim just laughs. "Come on Ian, try to put some fun in this." "How will we look for a paddle without losing the boat? If we both swim, there's a big chance we could lose it. One of us has to watch." "...Let's switch places. I'll swim underwater for a little bit, and I won't get too far from the boat. When I'm out of breath, you can look. Got it?" "...Ok, fine."

=====

_I throw my luggage onto my bed in me and Ian's room in the cruise we're going on, and start processing it all. I've flown all the way from England to Southern California to meet up with the NB guys and the rest of the HB guys, and hang out and play video games on a cruise. It's going to be amazing. I never get the opportunity to hang out with fellow YouTube friends due to being so far away, and busy. These are going to be the best 2 weeks of my life._

_I get a text on my phone from Wallid:_

_"Hey Cadds, we're all gonna be meeting up at the main lobby once we all get here, probably around 6PM_ _. Can't wait to see you there!"_

_It's 3:15PM Pacific time, which means it'll be 11 at night back in England. It's a drastic change in time, by 8 hours. I'm already getting the jet lag, so I lie on my bed and rest for a while until then. I'm very tired, and I need the sleep._

_~~_

_At around 5:30, a loud noise wakes me up. I look and see that Ian had come in with all his stuff, and he'd dropped a bunch of it. "Oh...don't worry, I'll help you..." I whisper. I climb out of bed and help him out. "Thanks, Jim. I think I brought a bit too much stuff here..." "It's fine, haha."_

_Ian looks at the time on his phone. "It's 5:30, and the cruise should be going on by 6:15...hopefully everyone should be here by then." "Do you know who's already here?" I ask him, opening a can of Pepsi to keep me awake. "Hmm...the rest of Hidden Block, Jon, Austin, Satch, and Shane. Nick, Paul, and Josh told me not long ago that they're already in the area and are heading this way, same with Jared and Jirard." "Well, shall we go ahead and head up there, just to be early?" "We shall."  
_

_=====_

**_caddy's pov;_ **

I take a deep breath and dive under the turquoise sea. I glide slowly and carefully under the water, hoping to find something to use as a paddle. The water's a little bit murky, but I can still see well. I get lower and lower, but I still don't find anything of any kind that's paddle-worthy.

I swim back up for air and find Ian. "Ian...I can't find anything down there. You're gonna have to go down now." He looks to his side, like he's found something. "...Stay here, I think I found our paddle." He says. He starts swimming as fast as he could over to what he found, and he holds up our paddle. "JIM! I FOUND DRIFTWOOD!"

We swim back to our raft and start paddling our way through. Hopefully we can get out of this ocean, find the guys, and find out how we got here.

 


	3. 3; songs and storms

**_ian's pov;_ **

Before we knew it, the sun was starting to set. We're getting tired slowly and we're thinking about turning in.

I curl up into a ball as I sleep, making myself comfortable enough on this raft in the cold breeze. Then, I start hearing....singing. I open my eyes and see Jim singing to himself, and..... _wow_. His voice is _gorgeous_. 

He's singing some song about being adrift at sea. It doesn't sound familiar, at least to me. "...Jim?" "-AHH!" he shrieks. "Ian....? It's....not what you think..." "Jim...you have a beautiful voice. I really mean it." Jim looks at me with those hazel eyes. "Well...thank you...I actually thought up this song. I've just always sang to myself when I was bored, and I still do. I do write little songs now and then, but they're not all that great." "They're not bad, Jim. You're genuinely a good songwriter, and a great singer." He smiles at me, and he starts lying down. "Well, I'm going to bed. 'Night, Ian."

I start getting back to sleep, and hope that we can get back soon.

=====

_Jim and I approach the main lobby of the cruise at exactly 6PM sharp, to meet up with the guys. Austin, Jon, Shane, Satch, Jimmy, Luke, Wallid, Jeff, Jim and I all look at each other the second we all meet, knowing that we haven't been all together in person since the summer of 2014. And now it's the spring of 2017, almost 3 years since. We've definitely changed, I'll say that._

_Jirard runs over to us with Jared, Nick, Paul, and Josh, all with tons of luggage on them. "Oh, everyone's here! We're just in time for the cruise to take off!" Jirard starts. "Everyone come to my room. I've got plenty of snacks and I have my Wii, which is why this luggage is so heavy for me. But tonight, we're going to have a big reunion party, and it's going to be amazing."_

_Once we all get to Jirard's room, Jim throws his bag of games and things on the floor by the couch and begins to converse with the guys as Jirard sets up the Wii. This is amazing for him, a rare experience. He's as excited as he was when he was at SGC. So I join on in, and embrace the moment. Things are already going great for all of us._

=====

**_caddy's pov;_ **

I open my eyes and see the pitch-black darkness of midnight consume me. The only light I have is the moon, reflecting off the cold sea. I can't fall back asleep, because the waves are starting to get a bit stronger and it's bothering me. It makes me worry, along with the large nasty storm clouds that are starting to block the moon.

That's when I wake up Ian, to let him know that we are probably in for a storm. "Ian...wake up. We're going to get stormed on. And it doesn't seem pretty."

He slowly inches up, and sees the signs. "What all are we gonna do about this? All we've got is this small raft and this piece of driftwood that's passing off as a paddle." "Well, we'll make do with what we have."

The waves start pile up, and get stronger on us. That's when it finally starts monsooning.

We gasp at the sudden pour of rain on us. Ian tries to move the raft through the harsh waves, and I try to help him out.

"...Jim...this rain is pelting down on us..." Ian grunts, trying to move the boat in the raging wind and rain. I look at him sternly, right into his gray eyes. "Are you going to push through, or are you going to drown?" I ask him. I fling his wet dirty blonde hair out of his eyes and I do the same with my hair. "We're going to fight through this."

So we fight through. But after a while of fighting through, the waves eventually push Ian and I off the raft. We try to make our ways to the surface, with the strong waves pulling us.

I try as hard as I can to keep my head above the rough waters, coughing out all the water that gets into my mouth. I turn my head around and expect to see the raft at least turned over, but there's no sign of it. The waters are that powerful. Ian then surfaces and attempts to swim to me in those waters. "JIM....! THE RAFT! IT'S GONE!" he yells. "IT'S NOT GONE! WE JUST CAN'T FIND IT!" "WE'VE LOST IT. THAT'S IT." "WELL, IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE THAT WAY, THEN I'LL LOOK FOR THE RAFT MYSELF!" I take a big deep breath and dive under, so I could find the raft a little easier without having to deal with the chaos of swimming on the choppy surface. I swim to where I think the raft was, but it's not there. The waves must've pushed it far away. _Very_ far away.

I swim back up and paddle on back to Ian, who's struggling to tread the rough seas. I quickly rush over to help him out. "Ian... _are you okay?_ " I say to him very quietly. " _I'm...fine...it's just...the water..._ " "I know Ian...I know..." I grab his hands and look at him, just as I did on the raft. "Just...please don't stop treading water. Don't give up. I know the open sea is hard on us, and we've never been in a situation like this in the 20+ years we've lived, but please, Ian, don't give up. We will make it."

Ian looks at me silently for a few more minutes, he lets go of me, and tries to tread water regularly again.

 


	4. back on the raft

**_ian's pov;_ **

I float on my back, staring at the bright cloudless sky. After we lost our raft in that dreadful storm 2 nights ago, we became completely stranded for sure, just treading water in the sea waiting for something to happen. I'm just surprised that we're still alive and kicking after all this, tiring our legs and starving.

Jim is holding on to my arm, so we don't lose each other as the ocean takes us in random directions. "Jim...." I say softly. "...I think we've gotten to the point where we are never seeing land again." "Don't say that, Ian..." I float off my back and look straight at Jim. "What do you mean 'don't say that'? We've been floating around here for 3 hours now, with no sign of anything good happening, or even anything bad." I then see the sad look on his face and then remember he's the same guy who saved me from nearly drowning on the night of the storm.

".........I'm tired, Jim....." "I am too......"

......

".....IAN! IAN! LOOK! IT'S OUR RAFT, IAN! LOOK!"

I float off my back and see an overturned yellow raft in the distance.

Are we having one of those ocean hallucinations...?

Well, if both me and Jim can see it, then I guess it's real.

....Holy crap, our raft is back!

We start swimming towards the raft, and when we get there, we turn it back up and we get right on it.

We lie down on it, catching our breath after 2 days of being in the water. I look at my prickly hands and look down at my stomach, which keeps growling like crazy.

 

=====

_"How did you get 1st place, Austin??? I had like, the fastest car!" Jared shouts, after Austin wins 1st place on Mario Kart. "I'm just good like that," Austin says, stretching his arms and lying back._

_Every minute of this get-together has been amazing. I never thought I'd get to see all of my overseas friends in real life ever again. And here I am, having a wonderful time, playing video games with the rest of NormalBoots and HiddenBlock, some of these people being my inspirations to start reviewing. It's amazing._

_~~_

_Once midnight comes, I'm the only one awake. I quietly head out of Jirard's room and go over to me and Ian's room. When I go in, I see Ian fast asleep, the covers pushed off his bed. It IS sorta hot in this room..._

_I turn down the heat in the room and place his blanket back on him. Just doing good._

_Then, I go to the window, pull out the curtains a little bit, and look at the beautiful night sky. I could look at it for hours. I open the window and hear the sounds of the cruise going along the water. Such a relaxing atmosphere._

_"Jim?" Ian whispers. Crap, I've woken him up. "Oh, Ian, I'm so sorry I woke you up. I won't be so loud anymore..." "Haha, it's fine. What time is it?" Ian asks. "Midnight....I think?" "Wow, I only went to bed an hour ago? Well then. Are you tired yet?" "Nah, not at all actually. Guess I had too much Pepsi tonight." Ian laughs. "Ah, classic Jim."_

_I see that the cruise is starting to go through some rocky areas. "Those rocks are cool looking," Ian points out. "They are.....I just sure hope that the ship doesn't hit them....."_

_The rocky area is very large. I guess they just want to take the scenic route....? Oh lord, please don't let the cruise hit those rocks..._

=====  
  


**_caddy's pov_ ** _;_

 

_I fall asleep on that raft as Ian acts as the motor for a while. I need rest. I'm done with swimming. I'm just about done with the water in general. I want to be back in that cruise with the guys, no, I want to be home, with my family._

 

~~~

 

Suddenly, I'm once again surfacing the water, coughing and gasping. _What the heck?_ I'm supposed to be on that raft!

I'm completely exhausted. I don't have the energy to swim right now. I mean, I'm a decent swimmer, but of course that's gonna get me nowhere in the ocean when I'm tired as all heck.

Then I realize: _Ian's not here with me._

He couldn't have thrown me out of that raft on purpose, could he? No. I had to have accidentally fell out.

_Before I know it, I'm gasping for air and trying to keep my head above water every second I'm in those choppy waters. I float on my back and take deep breaths. My eyes close. My ears fill with water. My arms and legs are more tired than before. I want to start swimming back to Ian. But I don't even have the strength to tread water. I then start to sink.  
_

_And that's when I hear someone swimming over to me. His arms grab me and take me to the surface. His gasp sounds like...Ian's. It is Ian's.  
_

 

_~~~~  
_

 

" _....Jim!_ Jim, are you alright?" I find myself waking up on the raft, Ian looking right at me. "What....happened?" "Well...um....you sorta....'sleepwalked' out of the raft. I had to go in and save you, you were getting pulled away fast in those waters. I had to pull the raft along with me so we wouldn't lose it again."

I sit up and try not to fall asleep again, afraid this whole episode might happen again. _  
_


	5. what happened on that friday night

=====  
  


**_march 24th, 2017;_ **

 

 

.......

**_ BANG!!! _ **

.......  
  
  


_I fall out of my bed, the covers coming down with me. A loud sound seems to have waken me up, and it woke Ian up too. And I already know what it was. "..Jim? Do you know what that was-" "The rocks. The rocks, Ian. The ship hit the rocks."_ _"Jim....just....I don't think it's that....look, I'll go back to sleep, and if people start noticing, we'll do something about it." Ian goes back to bed, and I do too. Maybe it's just my imagination..._

_~~~~_

_After about 5 minutes, I wake up again to_ _hear screaming and running out in the hallway_ _._ _I_ _get out of bed,_ _throw on my jeans and my shoes very quickly, and go and pull Ian out of the bed. "Woah, woah, are you sure that's what's going on?" Ian asks_ _. He then hears the screaming_ _. "...You're right."_

_~~~~_

_So we run through the hallway, up the stairs and up to the lobby. And holy crap, it's_ **_crowded_ ** _. "H-how are we g-going to get o-out of h-h-here...?" I ask, my voice shaking. "I think we're just going to have to wait.....for a long time...." Ian says._

_When 10 more nerve-breaking minutes pass, I_ _then feel the boat tilt a little._ _Then it tilts more. And a little more. No_ _, not a little, a lot. It starts to tilt a_ **_lot_ ** _. Ian and I fall down on each other, and us and the crowd slide down the floor. Where are the rest of the guys? Are they already on the lifeboats?_

_Then before I know it, there's water pouring in. People were trying to go up the stairs up to the deck faster then they were, but everyone just kept tripping and tumbling. "Come on, Jim," Ian demands as he grabs my arm. He runs me to the stairs, but THAT'S when something else happens. The boat tilts over to the max, and we're holding on to the stair rail. The water starts to fill even faster._

_"We're....not....going.....to die...." Ian grunts. He pulls himself up, with me holding on to him still. And when we get up, it happens._

_"JIIIIIIIIM!!!!" I get out of my stance and see that Ian fell down into the rising water. "OH MY GOD, IAN!"_

_The crowd pushes Ian under the water, and he's not coming up._

_I want to go down there, but something inside me is preventing me from letting go of that rail._

_I hang on to the rail for dear life for a while, and then suddenly, the boat starts breaking in half, which means the boat on my side is turning back to normal. So I'm still holding on to that rail as the boat slowly turns back up, flinging me around. The screams pile up, there's people falling down, it's chaos._

_I pull myself up on the rail, get on those stairs, and speed faster than my Cool Boarders 3 review to the top deck to see if there's any lifeboats._

_....Oh god._

_Why did I ALREADY forget about Ian?_

_He probably floated out into the ocean after the boat snapped._

_.......Crap, there's no more lifeboats!!_

_This is my only way off this boat. There's no more lifeboats._

_Should I jump down....?_

_I need to._

_The other guys are already on the lifeboats. They'll probably have room for me._

_I need to get down there and save Ian._

_I take a deep breath and jump off the boat._

_...._

_When I hit the water, all of the loudness.....stops. I only hear the gurgling sounds of underwater, my beanie tries to float off but I hold it on, and my legs start propelling me to the surface._

_"_ _ Ah _ _........IAN? IAN? IAN!" He's not on the surface. I look to my right and see that Austin, Jeff and Luke are wayyyy over there in a lifeboat. I just need to get Ian and swim there to get on that boat._

_I try to swim away from all the commotion in the rough ocean and then take a deep breath and dive under._

 

_I swim deep. I need to find Ian. I can't lose a long-time friend tonight._

_....._

_Multiple times I come up to the surface for air and swim back down. Is he really that hard to find?_

_Then I find him. He looks terrified...._

_I bring him up and look at him. I see blood running down from his nose...he probably bonked his nose on something hard as he was floating out to the ocean._

_I try to start CPR on him right there since there's nothing to lie him on. And surely enough, he wakes up._

_"....Jim..." he whispers, his gray eyes opening slowly. "Ian....oh my God you were scaring me. I'm glad you're okay.."_

_After giving Ian a few minutes to breathe, I ask him "Can you swim right now?". "Yes, I'm sure." Ian lets go of me and starts treading. "Is there no lifeboats?" Ian asks. "No, there's not any empty ones, which is why we're swimming to where Austin, Jeff, and Luke are in that lifeboat. Hopefully they'll have room."_

_We start to swim there, but I find out that them and the rest of the guys have already gone on....oh God no._

_Wait!......I see an unoccupied lifeboat._

_"Jim, look, there's an empty lifeboat!" "I was just about to point that out."_

_Ian and I keep swimming in the chaotic waters filling up with people. The cruise has already caught on fire. How is this not a dream?_

_We climb on the lifeboat and try to make it go farther away from the cruise._

 

_~~~~~_   
  
  


_It seems as if our lives have just turned upside down._

_This experience will make some of us fear cruises, the ocean, or traveling in general._

_Why? Because something like this has never happened to any of us in HiddenBlock or NormalBoots._

_We could either find our way home or be marooned in the ocean forever._

 

=====

 

**_ian's pov;_ **

_I blacked out in complete fear as soon as that boat snapped in half._

_When I couldn't hold on to the rail anymore and I fell down in that water, I kept getting pushed under by all of the people there squirming around and panicking, and when the boat snapped, I got pushed into the ocean and blacked out._

~~~~

"....Caddy......Ian......"

I feel a nudge on my shoulder, which wakes me up. What is Jim doing?

"Jim, I swear..." I open my eyes and see that Jim's still asleep. Who nudged me?

I turn back and.....I see....Austin, Jeff, and Luke on their own raft. Then I see that there's two other larger rafts, with the rest of HB and NB in them.

No.

"Are.....a-are you guys really here, or am I hallucinating?" Jeff swoops over and pinches my arm. "Ow, what was that for- oh. Oh. Oh my God. JIM! WAKE UP!"


	6. back together

**_ian's pov;_ **

I shake the sleepy Brit until he wakes up. His hazel eyes open up immediately, and he yawns and takes off his beanie, revealing his thin brown hair. "What do you want, Ian?" he asks, annoyed. "LOOK." Jim looks over to where the guys are, and then splashes some water on his face to make himself wake up and make sure that he isn't seeing things. "We're not seeing things?" he says. "No, we're not."

"We were so worried about you guys, we thought you two drowned or something." Jon says. Tears then start coming out of Jeff's eyes. "Look, guys...we're so sorry we forgot about you...we were keeping our rafts together and we realized we left you two behind...I'm sure it was horrible for you two."

I looked at Jim, and Jim looked at me. I thought back to the storm when Jim helped me when I was struggling to keep my head above water, and then there was yesterday when Jim fell out of the raft and nearly drowned, and I saved him....and I could've sworn there was another time Jim saved me from drowning....is this...deja vu?

The cruise. Of course. It sunk. THAT'S what happened to us.

This experience was less terrifying with Jim by my side. If I was by myself, I would've probably been dead by now. And I'm sure it would probably be the same for Jim, and the rest of the guys in general if they were all separate, by themselves.

I then give Jim a hug. I just do. I realize that I sorta went a little hard on him when he was trying to help me through these several days...

"I'm sorry, Jim...." I tell him. "Haha, sorry for what?" "I was a little difficult with you through this experience..." "It's all fine, Ian."

~~~

_We travel along the ocean, all 15 of us, in 4 rafts._

_We wait for any help that can come to us._

_It's lonely, gloomy, and of course scary..._

_...but at least we're all united again._

_And we don't know where we're gonna end up, but where ever we do, we'll all have each other._

 

**~end fanfic~**

**it took me over a year to make and finish a cruise story holy crap**

**so many different tries and i fINALLY DID IT**

 

 


End file.
